I'm now connected to the internet from my house in the village!!! I bought a mobile modem last week and it has pretty much changed my life. I still don't have electricity, so don't expect me to be much more accessible, but from the time I get to town and charge my computer to the time the battery runs out, I am truly straddling two worlds. I read by candlelight, cook outside on a charcoal stove, and carry water (or rather, pay my neighbor's kid to carry water) from 2k away, yet I can keep updated on Natalie Portman's pregnancy and Lindsay Lohan's shenanigans if I so choose (which I don't). WEIRD.
So here are some updates...
First of all, I made it home safely from my in-service training in Morogoro and a week of rest and relaxation in Dar Es Salaam. Dar is a big city that has all sorts of exciting things, most notably in the part of town where diplomats and ex-pats live and shop, officially known as "the Peninsula" but (sometimes fondly, sometimes sarcastically) referred to as "America" by me and my friends. During my time in "America," I visited a few grocery stores. They are probably small by real American standards but they were scary nonetheless. I know you all think that the life I'm living out in the village is tough, but I'm more impressed at those of you that can stare at a wall of toothpaste and know which one you want. Keeping in mind that I live in a place where the nearest loaf of bread to buy is a 1 hr bus ride away, I'm sure you can understand why I caused some stares by the amount of time I spent gawking at the toothpaste selection.
I'm super pumped to be back in my village now. I've been gone waaaay too long. My counterpart (Mama Ashura) and I are geared up to start projects, though most of them will have to wait until after the planting season (April). Tomorrow, my neighbor is going to help me prepare to farm the plot of land I didn't realize I inherited along with my house. I'm also getting ready to begin two projects with the secondary school, both of which I'm really excited about. Starting mid-January, I'm going to be teaching Life Skills (aka how to not get HIV, pregnant, addicted to drugs, etc) to the Form 4s, mostly 17-19 year olds. I'm nervous about it, because I haven't had the best luck with teaching (zoom in on the preschoolers who, after two months of my tutelage, can sing the ABCs up to G, at which point it all goes to hell), but I seem to do better with older kids and the topics are sexy enough that they'll actually pay attention.
The second project has the eventual goal of getting a water tank and/or pump installed at the secondary school because right now the kids spend an ungodly amount of time fetching water rather than studying. Rather than just whipping off a grant for them, I've decided to take a painfully slow but hopefully more sustainable route. Along with the Headmistress, I'm in the process of selecting 5-10 top students to form a "water and development taskforce." Over the next semester, I'm going to teach them about grants, NGOs, aid, etc. I'm hoping to engage them in more than just project planning, but also to discuss sticky issues, like the sustainability of aid. The ultimately aim of the taskforce is for the students themselves to come up with a solution to the school's water problem. Whether they decide to fund raise in the community and build it themselves or write a grant, I'm going to do my best to support them while still granting them full ownership of the project, whether or not it succeeds.
That's the plan at least. But over the past 6 months I've learned that the only thing I can definitely count on is that nothing will happen as I expect.
Finally, I want to share with you all a funny situation I found myself in today. My neighbors, Mama and Baba Mdogo, just got home from a long journey that took them on a bus passing through a few of the national parks. I remember when my Dad and Amy got back from their safari last year I was kind of rude to them about their picture slide-show--saying it was dehumanizing for them to show off pictures of the Africans they passed on the bus the same way they show off pictures of animals. Keeping that in mind, here is what Baba Mdogo told me when I asked him what they saw on their journey: "So many animals! We saw giraffes and hippopotamus and zebras and elephants...and the wazungu [white people]! You wouldn't believe how many wazungu we saw!! They were wearing these funny hats and they all had cameras and they were speaking English so fast and some of them were speaking other languages, too. There were so many of them and they all looked so excited to see the animals. You should go to the national parks because you will have lots of wazungu friends there, Lauren!"
So there you have it, Dad. They think you're just as fascinating as you think they are.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Khanga v. Bucket: The Ultimate Standoff
Living without electricity or running water makes you appreciate things in a different way. Before I hopped on that Africa-bound plane, I had never seen, let alone wore, let alone mopped my floor with, a Khanga. Today I can safely say that I would be dead without it.
The khanga is just a thin piece of fabric. It is most frequently used as a wrap or headscarf. The internet here isn't fancy enough for me to upload a picture right now, but you should google it if you're confused.
My friend Sativa is convinced that the bucket has more uses than the khanga. Buckets are useful, don't get me wrong. You should definitely read her blog post about them (www.sativamarie.wordpress.com) and make up your own mind. But I feel, in the name of fairness, you deserve to hear the khanga's side of the story. Sativa says I'm copying her by writing this post. She is a bully. That is why I call her "Dada Mkubwa," which means "big sister," because big sisters are bullies. I think. I've never actually had one.
Anyway. The many uses of a khanga:
- The Classic (wrapping around your waist)
- Tablecloth
- Carpet
- Drapes
- Poster/general wall art
- Get your local tailor to make you a: dress, shirt, pants, skirt, hat, dira, headscarf, etc etc etc)
- Cape to wear to the Harry Potter movie in Dar Es Salaam ("I'm so not going with you to that," - Jen)
- Any/all articles of clothing for kids
- Grocery bag
- To cover up your luggage if you don't want people to see how fancy your bags are
- Menstrual pads (if anyone wants information on how to do this, attend your local Peace Corps girls conference)
- Oven mitts (but be careful, I've already burned holes in 3 khangas doing this...)
- Head wrap (all styles--the bigger the better)
- Apron (kinda synonymous with "the classic")
- Filter for water (but not a substitution for boiling!)
- Diaper (if you believe in that kind of thing, most Mamas just let the kiddos run free)
- Blanket and/or sheets
- Bathing suit cover
- "Farm clothes"
- Prayer rug (I'm actually not sure this would be allowed--I'll ask a Mama and let you know)
- Yoga mat
- Covering up your tanktop when you can't stand the heat
- Really cheap sunscreen
- Hijab
- Sending subliminal messages (each khanga has a saying on the bottom in Swahili, usually it's things like "God's word is the final word" but sometimes it's more sassy and less religious.)
- Face mask when the dust and/or body odor takes over your nasal passages
- Make-shift curtain when you have to chimba dawa* on a bus ride
- "Mattress mambo" (if you have to ask, you're too young to know)
- Travel pillow
- Door mat
- Umbrella
- Required uniform for any village funeral or wedding
- Fanny pack (Sativa's favorite)
- To strap a child to your back (he ain't going nowhere)
- To shield yourself when breastfeed--though open-air is the preference in my village
- Jifunga-ing** when you're wearing scandalous things like jeans or a knee-length skirt
- When it gets old, it becomes a rag/mop/etc
- Automatic hand-dryer (minus the automatic)
- Bathing suit (or so I hear, this sounds kind of impractical)
- If you're in a really hard spot, toilet paper
- Gauze and pretty much any other medical supply
I'll keep adding if I think of more things... let me know if you come up with any I haven't thought of!
* "Chimba dawa" is literally "dig for medicine," but it's a euphemism for pissing on the side of the road
** "Jifunga" literally means "close yourself"
- Campaign
The khanga is just a thin piece of fabric. It is most frequently used as a wrap or headscarf. The internet here isn't fancy enough for me to upload a picture right now, but you should google it if you're confused.
My friend Sativa is convinced that the bucket has more uses than the khanga. Buckets are useful, don't get me wrong. You should definitely read her blog post about them (www.sativamarie.wordpress.com) and make up your own mind. But I feel, in the name of fairness, you deserve to hear the khanga's side of the story. Sativa says I'm copying her by writing this post. She is a bully. That is why I call her "Dada Mkubwa," which means "big sister," because big sisters are bullies. I think. I've never actually had one.
Anyway. The many uses of a khanga:
- The Classic (wrapping around your waist)
- Tablecloth
- Carpet
- Drapes
- Poster/general wall art
- Get your local tailor to make you a: dress, shirt, pants, skirt, hat, dira, headscarf, etc etc etc)
- Cape to wear to the Harry Potter movie in Dar Es Salaam ("I'm so not going with you to that," - Jen)
- Any/all articles of clothing for kids
- Grocery bag
- To cover up your luggage if you don't want people to see how fancy your bags are
- Menstrual pads (if anyone wants information on how to do this, attend your local Peace Corps girls conference)
- Oven mitts (but be careful, I've already burned holes in 3 khangas doing this...)
- Head wrap (all styles--the bigger the better)
- Apron (kinda synonymous with "the classic")
- Filter for water (but not a substitution for boiling!)
- Diaper (if you believe in that kind of thing, most Mamas just let the kiddos run free)
- Blanket and/or sheets
- Bathing suit cover
- "Farm clothes"
- Prayer rug (I'm actually not sure this would be allowed--I'll ask a Mama and let you know)
- Yoga mat
- Covering up your tanktop when you can't stand the heat
- Really cheap sunscreen
- Hijab
- Sending subliminal messages (each khanga has a saying on the bottom in Swahili, usually it's things like "God's word is the final word" but sometimes it's more sassy and less religious.)
- Face mask when the dust and/or body odor takes over your nasal passages
- Make-shift curtain when you have to chimba dawa* on a bus ride
- "Mattress mambo" (if you have to ask, you're too young to know)
- Travel pillow
- Door mat
- Umbrella
- Required uniform for any village funeral or wedding
- Fanny pack (Sativa's favorite)
- To strap a child to your back (he ain't going nowhere)
- To shield yourself when breastfeed--though open-air is the preference in my village
- Jifunga-ing** when you're wearing scandalous things like jeans or a knee-length skirt
- When it gets old, it becomes a rag/mop/etc
- Automatic hand-dryer (minus the automatic)
- Bathing suit (or so I hear, this sounds kind of impractical)
- If you're in a really hard spot, toilet paper
- Gauze and pretty much any other medical supply
I'll keep adding if I think of more things... let me know if you come up with any I haven't thought of!
* "Chimba dawa" is literally "dig for medicine," but it's a euphemism for pissing on the side of the road
** "Jifunga" literally means "close yourself"
- Campaign
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
TZ Twins
I’m in Morogoro right now at in-service training (IST), which is kinda like Camp Peace Corps Part 2. After spending the past three and a half months alone in our villages, all 39 members of my training class are back together for training and to share our site experiences. The first day we all drew creative, artistic, or graphical interpretations of our experience over the past six months. I drew a color coded line graph that depicted my happiness, feeling of success, and integration. Apparently I'm a little left brained. The lines were all over the place, and also tended to be pretty aligned with one another--I can't integrate if I'm not happy, I don't feel happy when I don't feel successful, etc.
Some of the more creative volunteers drew pictures. Katie, who spent a lot of time traveling due to medical and administrative issues, drew a map of Tanzania and outlined her emotions on each of her many bus rides. My friend Justin titled his y-axis "craving for taco bell." One girl just balled up her paper and taped it to the wall. And we all knew what she meant by that, because we've all felt that way too at some point or another. It was comforting to realize that we're all going through this crazy experience together.
Last night, our “counterparts,“ people from our villages that we’ve chosen to be partners and advisors over the next two years, arrived. This next week seems likely to be a sort of “worlds collide” type experience.
The first activity we did was for each PCV to introduce their counterpart and then be introduced by her or him. It was immediately evident that we have all chosen what can only be described as our Tanzanian clones. Quiet people choose quiet people, class clown types used their introductions as an opportunity for a duet standup act, the academic types tended to choose students or teachers, and a girl I’ve always described as an “old soul” chose an adorable and sprightly 70-year-old man.
I’m no exception. My counterpart, Mama Ashura, was the first woman in the group to talk (in this culture, women are usually pretty quiet in groups when men are present). Like me, she has a tendency to dominate conversations, always has an opinion, and frequently raised her hand when a question was asked, eager to show off that she had an answer and unafraid to give a wrong one. We did a group activity that involved writing on big poster papers and I looked over from my group and saw that she, like me, had taken on the role of scribe. And anyone who’s been in a class with me also knows that I have a nasty habit of chit-chatting to my neighbors during lectures. Mama Ashura was constantly leaning over to whisper things to me, give her opinions, giggle over inside jokes, or ask me for translations when the speaker lapsed into English.
Creepy, right?
During the session today, our counterparts had an opportunity to list some of the myths they have heard in the villages about Peace Corps. Among the highlights (and lowlights) were:
- We are CIA spies (the classic)
- We are photographers intending to take pictures of Tanzanians to either sell in America for large sums of money or to share with our friends back home so we can laugh at how poor people are here (if you laugh at the pictures I post online, unless they are of people being funny, I will be very angry at you)
- Our parents lived in Tanzania many years ago and we have come to retrieve the things they left behind (this weird myth exists in my village, apparently--Mom, Dad, anything you need to tell me?)
- We are here on a bioterror/business venture in which we will spread strange diseases, and later return with an expensive cure (this terrifying rumor was also a Mama Ashura contribution)
Most of today was spent clarifying what Peace Corps is and what it isn’t. For the record, none of that is true.
After this training, I'm heading to Dar Es Salaam (the capital) for a few days to do some administrative stuff, shopping, and most importantly to see the new Harry Potter movie!!! I'm taking a slightly longer route back to my village (the shortest possible route would be 2 days anyway) because apparently the rains have started so once I'm there, I'll be stranded in a muddy mess of roadlessness for a good long time. Hopefully I'll be able to be in touch somewhat, but if I seem to have gone quiet for a few months, that'll be why. (And now I can't get "I bless the rains down in Africa" out of my head. Awesome.)
Some of the more creative volunteers drew pictures. Katie, who spent a lot of time traveling due to medical and administrative issues, drew a map of Tanzania and outlined her emotions on each of her many bus rides. My friend Justin titled his y-axis "craving for taco bell." One girl just balled up her paper and taped it to the wall. And we all knew what she meant by that, because we've all felt that way too at some point or another. It was comforting to realize that we're all going through this crazy experience together.
Last night, our “counterparts,“ people from our villages that we’ve chosen to be partners and advisors over the next two years, arrived. This next week seems likely to be a sort of “worlds collide” type experience.
The first activity we did was for each PCV to introduce their counterpart and then be introduced by her or him. It was immediately evident that we have all chosen what can only be described as our Tanzanian clones. Quiet people choose quiet people, class clown types used their introductions as an opportunity for a duet standup act, the academic types tended to choose students or teachers, and a girl I’ve always described as an “old soul” chose an adorable and sprightly 70-year-old man.
I’m no exception. My counterpart, Mama Ashura, was the first woman in the group to talk (in this culture, women are usually pretty quiet in groups when men are present). Like me, she has a tendency to dominate conversations, always has an opinion, and frequently raised her hand when a question was asked, eager to show off that she had an answer and unafraid to give a wrong one. We did a group activity that involved writing on big poster papers and I looked over from my group and saw that she, like me, had taken on the role of scribe. And anyone who’s been in a class with me also knows that I have a nasty habit of chit-chatting to my neighbors during lectures. Mama Ashura was constantly leaning over to whisper things to me, give her opinions, giggle over inside jokes, or ask me for translations when the speaker lapsed into English.
Creepy, right?
During the session today, our counterparts had an opportunity to list some of the myths they have heard in the villages about Peace Corps. Among the highlights (and lowlights) were:
- We are CIA spies (the classic)
- We are photographers intending to take pictures of Tanzanians to either sell in America for large sums of money or to share with our friends back home so we can laugh at how poor people are here (if you laugh at the pictures I post online, unless they are of people being funny, I will be very angry at you)
- Our parents lived in Tanzania many years ago and we have come to retrieve the things they left behind (this weird myth exists in my village, apparently--Mom, Dad, anything you need to tell me?)
- We are here on a bioterror/business venture in which we will spread strange diseases, and later return with an expensive cure (this terrifying rumor was also a Mama Ashura contribution)
Most of today was spent clarifying what Peace Corps is and what it isn’t. For the record, none of that is true.
After this training, I'm heading to Dar Es Salaam (the capital) for a few days to do some administrative stuff, shopping, and most importantly to see the new Harry Potter movie!!! I'm taking a slightly longer route back to my village (the shortest possible route would be 2 days anyway) because apparently the rains have started so once I'm there, I'll be stranded in a muddy mess of roadlessness for a good long time. Hopefully I'll be able to be in touch somewhat, but if I seem to have gone quiet for a few months, that'll be why. (And now I can't get "I bless the rains down in Africa" out of my head. Awesome.)
Monday, November 29, 2010
Reality
I haven't spent a lot of time in this blog talking about the difficult times. Maybe I've been misleading you, in which case I'm sorry. So here's the truth: At least once a day, the thought runs through my head--"I could go home right now. I could call it quits and be eating a goat cheese salad [or pizza, or thai food, or mint chocolate chip ice cream, or...] in 72 hours." That's the sort of thing we're not supposed to admit, but it's true. It doesn't mean I'm going anywhere anytime soon. At least once a day I also think, "I'm the luckiest human being in the world." The combination of these two thoughts, and the short time frame within which both of them float through my mind, is referred to by volunteers as the "roller coaster." The thing about roller coasters, even emotional ones, is that they are simultaneously thrilling, terrifying, fun, and nauseating.
Some days I would rather sit in my house and stare at the wall than attempt to have a coherent conversation in Swahili. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the cultural barriers separating me from my new friends--it has become apparent over the past few months that there really are some things that can't be understood cross-culturally. As close as I am to my Mamas, there is so much about me they will never understand. And I'm sure they feel the same way about me. And sometimes I just want to sit in my house and sob hysterically about the things I've witnessed here, and the fact that there is so, so little I can do to help. Other times I just feel totally numb. I find myself making really off-color jokes, which I guess is my way of trying to deal with things that are just beyond my comprehension. AIDS? Food insecurity? If I can't laugh, I'll cry. Sometimes I do cry. The realization that, statistically, at least a few of the children I play with on a daily basis are going to die of preventable disease. How are you supposed to deal with that? Everyday, I rotate between feelings of anger so intense I think it might eat me alive and numbness to the point of boredom and sadness so deep I might get lost inside it.
The roller coaster has been getting faster. The twists are more nauseating, the rails a little rickety-er, the drops are more dramatic. I find myself overwhelmed by the simplest decisions -- do I hold on or throw my hands up? Do I scream with joy or scream with fear? And really, is there even a difference?
Some days I would rather sit in my house and stare at the wall than attempt to have a coherent conversation in Swahili. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the cultural barriers separating me from my new friends--it has become apparent over the past few months that there really are some things that can't be understood cross-culturally. As close as I am to my Mamas, there is so much about me they will never understand. And I'm sure they feel the same way about me. And sometimes I just want to sit in my house and sob hysterically about the things I've witnessed here, and the fact that there is so, so little I can do to help. Other times I just feel totally numb. I find myself making really off-color jokes, which I guess is my way of trying to deal with things that are just beyond my comprehension. AIDS? Food insecurity? If I can't laugh, I'll cry. Sometimes I do cry. The realization that, statistically, at least a few of the children I play with on a daily basis are going to die of preventable disease. How are you supposed to deal with that? Everyday, I rotate between feelings of anger so intense I think it might eat me alive and numbness to the point of boredom and sadness so deep I might get lost inside it.
The roller coaster has been getting faster. The twists are more nauseating, the rails a little rickety-er, the drops are more dramatic. I find myself overwhelmed by the simplest decisions -- do I hold on or throw my hands up? Do I scream with joy or scream with fear? And really, is there even a difference?
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Eid Mubarak and reflections on integration and success...
I pull the hem of my dira over my bare feet and hide my hands beneath my shawl. My hijab is tight and itchy around my neck but I don't pull my hands out to adjust it. Even if I wanted to, I'm practically sitting on top of the women next to me so any unperscribed movement is a poor choice. As the service begins I mimic my Mama's actions--standing, kneeling, endlessly repeating "Allah Akbar." I try to pay attention, stay open and aware of the culture, spirituality, and beauty of this event I am honored to have been invited to. But all I can think about is keeping my white hands hidden and how, for the first time in 5 months, I might, maybe, blend into a crowd. The kids in front and to the side of me can still see my pale face, but to the rows and rows of women sitting and kneeling behind me, my colorful hijab and dira won't warrent a second glance. I feel relieved, free, and human in a way I suddenly realize I haven't felt in a very long time.
But for every other hour of my life here, I will never blend in. And if anyone was watching closely they noticed me fumble over prayers, motions, the itchy hijab situation.
I'm doing what I can to integrate here, but there are some barriers I will never cross. One minute I feel like one of the gang, laughing and drinking chai with my Mamas, and the next minute I notice that a kid has burst into tears at the sight of my strange pale eyes and freckly nose, or a teenage boy is staring at me like I'm a dirty picture in the bathroom who can't see his objectifying gaze.
One story which nicely illustrates the stage of integration I'm at took place last week as i was returning home from a long and poorly planned thougrh, thankfully, safely fexecuted hike up Mt. Hanang with, no joke, 50 secondary school students. I was exhausted and grumpy and ready to be home, alone, far away from the nearest teenager. As we reached the base of the mountain, we still had another few hours of walking back to the village. So, please don't judge me for this, I left the kids with their other chaparone and made my way to the main road to try to catch a ride. (Yes, I hitchhike here sometimes, but if you saw our busses, you'd understand why.) So a young man finally picked me up and immediately started doing what most men here do upon first meeting me--talking about marraige. Usually I just laugh it off and let him off gently by saying something like "That's very kind of you, but right now I'm focused on my studies." (Which has led to a running joke in my village where the young men ask me everyday if I've learned everything there is to know yet.)
But that day, I was in a particularly irritable mood. So the driver ends up asking if I have a husband, but instead of saying "mume" he says "mzee," which works in context but literally means "old man." So I decide to mess with him and tell him I'm married to a wonderful mzee named Saidi Jumanne*. Saidi Jumanne, in reality, is my favorite "mzee" grandpa in the village. So the driver and I have this long chat where I make up all sorts of ridiculous stuff about my fictional marraige.
Finally we reach the village and I hop out of the car to a crowd of the same young men I mentioned earlier, who like to joke about when I'm going to stop studying and settle down. So they're all boisterously welcoming me home and the driver turns to them and asks if it's true that I have an mzee named Saidi Jumanne. It turns out the real Saidi was standing about ten feet away, perfectly in sight and very much in his mid-70s. The men, laughing hysterically, point in his direction and vehemently affirm that he is, in fact, my husband. The driver drove off, utterly confused.
During Peace Corps staging (the three days of logistics before we boarded the plane to TZ), we were asked to write what would make us feel like we've "succeeded" in the Peace Corps. Knowing my tendencies to be a stressed out ambitious freak, I decided to write something simpler than "when climate change halts and all of Tanzania is reforested." I wrote, "When I laugh with my neighbors." Mission accomplished, now on to deforestation...
*Not his real name, but it's equally Tanzanian
But for every other hour of my life here, I will never blend in. And if anyone was watching closely they noticed me fumble over prayers, motions, the itchy hijab situation.
I'm doing what I can to integrate here, but there are some barriers I will never cross. One minute I feel like one of the gang, laughing and drinking chai with my Mamas, and the next minute I notice that a kid has burst into tears at the sight of my strange pale eyes and freckly nose, or a teenage boy is staring at me like I'm a dirty picture in the bathroom who can't see his objectifying gaze.
One story which nicely illustrates the stage of integration I'm at took place last week as i was returning home from a long and poorly planned thougrh, thankfully, safely fexecuted hike up Mt. Hanang with, no joke, 50 secondary school students. I was exhausted and grumpy and ready to be home, alone, far away from the nearest teenager. As we reached the base of the mountain, we still had another few hours of walking back to the village. So, please don't judge me for this, I left the kids with their other chaparone and made my way to the main road to try to catch a ride. (Yes, I hitchhike here sometimes, but if you saw our busses, you'd understand why.) So a young man finally picked me up and immediately started doing what most men here do upon first meeting me--talking about marraige. Usually I just laugh it off and let him off gently by saying something like "That's very kind of you, but right now I'm focused on my studies." (Which has led to a running joke in my village where the young men ask me everyday if I've learned everything there is to know yet.)
But that day, I was in a particularly irritable mood. So the driver ends up asking if I have a husband, but instead of saying "mume" he says "mzee," which works in context but literally means "old man." So I decide to mess with him and tell him I'm married to a wonderful mzee named Saidi Jumanne*. Saidi Jumanne, in reality, is my favorite "mzee" grandpa in the village. So the driver and I have this long chat where I make up all sorts of ridiculous stuff about my fictional marraige.
Finally we reach the village and I hop out of the car to a crowd of the same young men I mentioned earlier, who like to joke about when I'm going to stop studying and settle down. So they're all boisterously welcoming me home and the driver turns to them and asks if it's true that I have an mzee named Saidi Jumanne. It turns out the real Saidi was standing about ten feet away, perfectly in sight and very much in his mid-70s. The men, laughing hysterically, point in his direction and vehemently affirm that he is, in fact, my husband. The driver drove off, utterly confused.
During Peace Corps staging (the three days of logistics before we boarded the plane to TZ), we were asked to write what would make us feel like we've "succeeded" in the Peace Corps. Knowing my tendencies to be a stressed out ambitious freak, I decided to write something simpler than "when climate change halts and all of Tanzania is reforested." I wrote, "When I laugh with my neighbors." Mission accomplished, now on to deforestation...
*Not his real name, but it's equally Tanzanian
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Life is so easy in America--they drive CARS to fetch water from the river!!
Finally found some of that internet stuff again!! Welcome to Month #5. I’ve officially gone from counting days to counting weeks to counting months--the next logical increment is years. That’s kind of terrifying, kind of awesome, and makes me feel like I really haven’t done a whole lot to write home about yet considering I’ve almost been in this country for half a year now. Either way, there’s been a request for more information about what I actually do all day, so here we go.
I’m still in the “first three months at site” phase during which Peace Corps discourages starting projects. Basically my job is to just get settled in, make friends, and integrate. I’m also slowly but surely gaining confidence in Swahili and starting to be able to really get to know people in a way I couldn’t before. In the meantime, I’ve learned a lot about myself. For example: I don’t want to be a preschool teacher. It seemed like a good way to practice Swahili, but it turns out I have no patience and I’m really, really bad at controlling a room of screaming children. Another example: I am not a collectivist--my neighbors think it’s insane that I live alone and feel really bad for me because of it, but I rush home at the end of every day to enjoy my few hours of solitude. Political inclinations aside, living in America for 21 years instilled some serious individualist tendencies in me. I‘m slowly getting used to collectivism, though--if it’s 7pm and I haven’t got my charcoal stove started yet, I don’t hesitate to pop by my neighbors and guiltlessly enjoy her ugali. I’ve also been known to show up at Mama Hawa’s to ask for help with things like spiders, ant infestations, cleaning up the kerosene I spilled all over my floor, etc.
But if I’m honestly integrating, that concept has to go both ways, right? So last night a sixteen year old girl I’ve talked to a few times before showed up at my house with her one month old baby, saying she had been kicked out and had no where to sleep. She definitely wasn’t lying--I had heard from other kids that she had some serious problems at home, had dropped out of school to work after second grade, and had very little family left in the village to help her out. This was exactly the sort of “Lauren has a chance to be someone’s hero” situation that I was looking forward to. But when the time came, I am ashamed to admit I hesitated pretty seriously before taking the girl in for the night. In the end we had a peaceful evening, though she seemed very suspicious of the brown rice I cooked. I asked her what she would do if she had unlimited money and she said she’d build a three-room brick house with a tin roof and buy a plot of land near the river to plant cabbage, carrots, and green peppers (particularly lucrative crops here). Insert reality check here.
And now in no particular order, examples of the other exciting things I‘ve done in the past few months:
- Spent a day hanging out at the local water source talking to people as they washed clothes and fetched water. During this time a long group of kids came to stare at me and after about half an hour I finally turned to them and said, “I’m a human being, not a TV” and then they screamed and ran away. I also overheard my favorite quote so far: “That’s the new mzungu (white person). She lives in America. Life there is so easy--they drive their CARS to fetch water from the river!” This was followed by a very confusing attempt by me to explain indoor plumbing. I’m always surprised by the things I’m incapable of explaining… pathetically, it’s partly because I don’t actually understand how many of our modern conveniences work. Air conditioning, airplanes, the internet… as far as I know that stuff runs on magic.
- I hang out a lot with the local wazee (old people), talking about their lives and all the things they remember about the village. Lately I’ve been on a tree kick, so sometimes I ask them to take me around and show me their favorite trees and their medicinal and technical uses. The younger community members tend to know a lot less about these sorts of things, partly because the area has been pretty badly deforested so there just aren’t as many trees to use anymore. I think this might be the start of a good project that will involve collecting this information (maybe with the help of the school kids through the environment club I am slowly in the process of organizing) and putting it into a booklet type thing. The booklet will serve partly to educate people about their local resources and partly to demonstrate the importance of reforestation and of reforesting with native species.
- I’ve started a girl’s exercise club that mostly involves me attempting to teach yoga to a group of Mamas and girls who are falling all over each other and laughing hysterically at my instructions. Some things just sound bizarre when you translate them into a language you’ve only been learning for four months… I end up saying stuff like “Now you will start as a dog which has down and then slowly turn into a child.”
Besides that I pretty much just walk around and meet people, read a lot, practice guitar, and spend way more time doing household chores than you could imagine. Washing clothes by hand is a full-day job…especially since I live 2km from my nearest water source. I’ve also been doing a lot of running--there are a lot of beautiful trails through the hills behind my house that I’ve been exploring. I’m hoping to run the Kilimanjaro half (or maybe (big maybe) full) marathon in February. I’m mostly posting that here right now so I’ll feel social pressure to actually do it because I’ve just announced to the whole wide internet that I’m going to--so be sure to make fun of me if I give up.
I’m still in the “first three months at site” phase during which Peace Corps discourages starting projects. Basically my job is to just get settled in, make friends, and integrate. I’m also slowly but surely gaining confidence in Swahili and starting to be able to really get to know people in a way I couldn’t before. In the meantime, I’ve learned a lot about myself. For example: I don’t want to be a preschool teacher. It seemed like a good way to practice Swahili, but it turns out I have no patience and I’m really, really bad at controlling a room of screaming children. Another example: I am not a collectivist--my neighbors think it’s insane that I live alone and feel really bad for me because of it, but I rush home at the end of every day to enjoy my few hours of solitude. Political inclinations aside, living in America for 21 years instilled some serious individualist tendencies in me. I‘m slowly getting used to collectivism, though--if it’s 7pm and I haven’t got my charcoal stove started yet, I don’t hesitate to pop by my neighbors and guiltlessly enjoy her ugali. I’ve also been known to show up at Mama Hawa’s to ask for help with things like spiders, ant infestations, cleaning up the kerosene I spilled all over my floor, etc.
But if I’m honestly integrating, that concept has to go both ways, right? So last night a sixteen year old girl I’ve talked to a few times before showed up at my house with her one month old baby, saying she had been kicked out and had no where to sleep. She definitely wasn’t lying--I had heard from other kids that she had some serious problems at home, had dropped out of school to work after second grade, and had very little family left in the village to help her out. This was exactly the sort of “Lauren has a chance to be someone’s hero” situation that I was looking forward to. But when the time came, I am ashamed to admit I hesitated pretty seriously before taking the girl in for the night. In the end we had a peaceful evening, though she seemed very suspicious of the brown rice I cooked. I asked her what she would do if she had unlimited money and she said she’d build a three-room brick house with a tin roof and buy a plot of land near the river to plant cabbage, carrots, and green peppers (particularly lucrative crops here). Insert reality check here.
And now in no particular order, examples of the other exciting things I‘ve done in the past few months:
- Spent a day hanging out at the local water source talking to people as they washed clothes and fetched water. During this time a long group of kids came to stare at me and after about half an hour I finally turned to them and said, “I’m a human being, not a TV” and then they screamed and ran away. I also overheard my favorite quote so far: “That’s the new mzungu (white person). She lives in America. Life there is so easy--they drive their CARS to fetch water from the river!” This was followed by a very confusing attempt by me to explain indoor plumbing. I’m always surprised by the things I’m incapable of explaining… pathetically, it’s partly because I don’t actually understand how many of our modern conveniences work. Air conditioning, airplanes, the internet… as far as I know that stuff runs on magic.
- I hang out a lot with the local wazee (old people), talking about their lives and all the things they remember about the village. Lately I’ve been on a tree kick, so sometimes I ask them to take me around and show me their favorite trees and their medicinal and technical uses. The younger community members tend to know a lot less about these sorts of things, partly because the area has been pretty badly deforested so there just aren’t as many trees to use anymore. I think this might be the start of a good project that will involve collecting this information (maybe with the help of the school kids through the environment club I am slowly in the process of organizing) and putting it into a booklet type thing. The booklet will serve partly to educate people about their local resources and partly to demonstrate the importance of reforestation and of reforesting with native species.
- I’ve started a girl’s exercise club that mostly involves me attempting to teach yoga to a group of Mamas and girls who are falling all over each other and laughing hysterically at my instructions. Some things just sound bizarre when you translate them into a language you’ve only been learning for four months… I end up saying stuff like “Now you will start as a dog which has down and then slowly turn into a child.”
Besides that I pretty much just walk around and meet people, read a lot, practice guitar, and spend way more time doing household chores than you could imagine. Washing clothes by hand is a full-day job…especially since I live 2km from my nearest water source. I’ve also been doing a lot of running--there are a lot of beautiful trails through the hills behind my house that I’ve been exploring. I’m hoping to run the Kilimanjaro half (or maybe (big maybe) full) marathon in February. I’m mostly posting that here right now so I’ll feel social pressure to actually do it because I’ve just announced to the whole wide internet that I’m going to--so be sure to make fun of me if I give up.
Monday, October 11, 2010
"Maendeleo" (Development)
I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of development. Before I came here, my belief system, peppered with radical ideology and salted with a nagging pragmatism that I can't seem to get rid of, put me pretty firmly in the "skeptical of development for environmental and cultural reasons" camp. I was, and am, incredibly disturbed by the fact that if everyone in the world lived as we do in the US, we would require something ridiculous like 7 and a half Planet Earths to sustain our destructive communities.
So here I am in a little village in Tanzania. You may be thinking of some sort of "land before time" traditional situation where people have a deep ancestral connection to the earth and everyone respects the environment and communities have lived here sustainable for thousands of years. Sorry to dissappoint, but it's not quite like that. My village is a mish-mash of many tribes, all of whom get along splendidly, but very few of whom have a traditional ancestral connection to this land. Many people I've met wound up here during the "villigization" process (Tanzania's experiment in socialism) or migrated to work on sisal plantations during the colonial period. The original inhabitants, pastoralist Barbaig, have emigrated. While many of my friends do have an environmentalist outlook, many of the villagers are just like Americans--they look at trees and see lumber, they look at all their natural resources and see ways that they can use them to make money. And why shouldn't they?
But let's pretend for a moment that community development follows a similar trajectory as individual human development. I would say my village is stuck in the middle of a very awkward pre-teen stage. Most of my neighbors live in mud or brick huts with grass roofs, but many have corrogated tin roofing, a fair few have electricity, and I know of at least five with satellite TV. Satellite TV! But no one has running water and clean water can be as far as 3 kilometers away. See what I mean about the awkward pre-teen stage of development? Here's the scary thing about comparing community development to human development... once we pass our prime, we continue "developing" until our bodies can no longer support life. Then we die. And so will our global community if we continue on the road to "dirty development" at home and abroad.
Of course it's ridiculous to say that my villagers, who have a vague idea of what life is like in the "First World," shouldn't be allowed to work towards achieving it if that's what they want. Above all else, I believe that all human beings have a right to self-determination. And many people want dirty development, at least for now. But what's the point of having highly developed, technological, advanced societies if we don't have a planet to enjoy our success on? The only possible solution I see is for a serious and fundamental shift of values to take place in our already "developed" communities. If we want our friends in the global south to live in luxury and comfort the way we do, we need to find a way to make "luxury and comfort" sustainable, starting with our own lives. Or we need to consider the real possibility that our very understanding of luxury and comfort is the problem.
So here I am in a little village in Tanzania. You may be thinking of some sort of "land before time" traditional situation where people have a deep ancestral connection to the earth and everyone respects the environment and communities have lived here sustainable for thousands of years. Sorry to dissappoint, but it's not quite like that. My village is a mish-mash of many tribes, all of whom get along splendidly, but very few of whom have a traditional ancestral connection to this land. Many people I've met wound up here during the "villigization" process (Tanzania's experiment in socialism) or migrated to work on sisal plantations during the colonial period. The original inhabitants, pastoralist Barbaig, have emigrated. While many of my friends do have an environmentalist outlook, many of the villagers are just like Americans--they look at trees and see lumber, they look at all their natural resources and see ways that they can use them to make money. And why shouldn't they?
But let's pretend for a moment that community development follows a similar trajectory as individual human development. I would say my village is stuck in the middle of a very awkward pre-teen stage. Most of my neighbors live in mud or brick huts with grass roofs, but many have corrogated tin roofing, a fair few have electricity, and I know of at least five with satellite TV. Satellite TV! But no one has running water and clean water can be as far as 3 kilometers away. See what I mean about the awkward pre-teen stage of development? Here's the scary thing about comparing community development to human development... once we pass our prime, we continue "developing" until our bodies can no longer support life. Then we die. And so will our global community if we continue on the road to "dirty development" at home and abroad.
Of course it's ridiculous to say that my villagers, who have a vague idea of what life is like in the "First World," shouldn't be allowed to work towards achieving it if that's what they want. Above all else, I believe that all human beings have a right to self-determination. And many people want dirty development, at least for now. But what's the point of having highly developed, technological, advanced societies if we don't have a planet to enjoy our success on? The only possible solution I see is for a serious and fundamental shift of values to take place in our already "developed" communities. If we want our friends in the global south to live in luxury and comfort the way we do, we need to find a way to make "luxury and comfort" sustainable, starting with our own lives. Or we need to consider the real possibility that our very understanding of luxury and comfort is the problem.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Who is a Jew?
I’m seating at the head table as the guest of honor at a graduation party for a bunch of kids I’ve never met. Someone gets up to give a speech and I listen for the first few seconds, then decide that I’m too lazy to try to pay attention to a speech I only understand about 30% of. I’m zoning out when suddenly I hear some weird words and notice that everyone is staring at me. If my Swahili isn’t failing me (which it very well could be), I’m fairly certain the speaker just said “Jewish,” “Jesus’s tribe,” and “great blessing.”
I had a lot of expectations coming in to the Peace Corps, but there are some notions you just can‘t preconceive. I didn’t have any idea how to respond, but they were staring at me like they expected me to give a speech so I stood up and said, “Congrats to the graduates. God bless everyone.” At least, I think I said that. I might have said, “I like oranges. Where is the bathroom?” Either way, everyone seemed happy enough and applauded a lot.
That’s a fairly representative snapshot of life in my new village. People compliment me and are very excited by my presence, and I smile and am confused most of the time. But most of the time, I love it. My village is about half Muslim and half Christian, and though everyone gets along wonderfully, they have very strong ties to their particular religious communities. As such, “What is your religion?” is one of the first questions I get asked by everyone I meet. At first, this question made me very nervous. Many Tanzanians I meet have never even heard the Swahili word for the Jewish people, “Wayahudi,” or they’ve seen it only in the Bible or Qur’an and assume that Wayahudi are some kind of mythical extinct population. I get very long, very awkward, very strange looks from pretty much everyone. And then the questions start coming.
“Who is a Jew?” is a question that entire college courses, none of which I’ve taken, are focused on. So when I find myself struggling to explain, in Swahili, what it means to be Jewish, I feel a little overwhelmed. I also end up using the word “we” for things that I myself very rarely do.
“We pray on Saturday,” I’ll start, and the Mama will interrupt me: “Ah yes, you’re a Seventh Day Adventist.”
It’s a long process, but can be very rewarding. I’ve actually found that being Jewish provides for good balance in my village, since neither the Muslim nor the Christian communities can claim me as exclusively their own. I fasted with my Muslim neighbors during Ramadan and partied it up on Eid--sort of like Halloween except instead of getting candy, you go door-to-door and eat ungodly amounts of spiced rice and beef. I also spend every Sunday zoning out during a sermon I don’t understand at one of the many Churches in my village--so far I’ve hit Lutheran and Pentecostal, next weekend I’m going to Seventh-Day Adventist and next up is Catholic.
My Muslim neighbors are delighted to hear that Jews don’t eat pigs either, and my Christian neighbors think it’s badass that I come from the same “tribe” as Jesus, in their words. One of my Mamas has taken a particular interest in learning about my religion. Having conversations about topics as intense as religion is not easy in a language I’ve been learning for only three months now, but she’s patient and we spend a lot of time flipping through dictionaries and apologetically grinning at each other. After I managed to explain Rosh Hashana to her, she gave me a papaya “for a sweet new year.”
One of the most powerful experiences I’ve had in Tanzania so far came when the same Mama asked me why there are so few Jews. I explained that we aren’t into proselytizing, and also that a genocide was committed against us during World War II. Having to boil the Holocaust down to concepts simple enough to explain with my shitty Swahili was tough. In the end I just said something like, “A bad man with a lot of power didn’t like Jewish people. He didn‘t like people who look like you either. They were forced to move to special villages where they were forced to work like slaves. Then they were killed. Six million were killed.” She held my hand for a very long time and said something very fast in what I think was a mixture of Arabic, Swahili, and her local tribal language.
Later that day, I was listening to my shortwave radio, and they were talking about the Rwandan genocide. I realized that I’d never really thought about the Holocaust in the context of other genocides. I also realized that it's really bizarre that I'd never seriously thought about the Holocaust in the context of other genocides. Jews like to think of ourselves as special, removed, our experiences separating rather than uniting us with other peoples - but wouldn't it make more sense for us to emerge from that experience with a sense of profound solidarity? When we say "Never Again," shouldn't we mean Darfur, too? Just some food for thought.
Pictures from Kibaoni!
Here are a couple pictures from my training village. Still no pictures from my new village, it takes forever to upload them so it might be a while.
Two of my favorite people, Logan and baby Batuli:
Me and my hot mess of a host family, making "funny faces":
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Kusema "kwa heri" (Saying goodbye)
Two months ago, I was dropped off at a burnt orange hut dwarfed by coconut trees in the picturesque village of Kibaoni. As the village kids crowded around me and stared, Baba gave me an orange peeled in the Tanzanian fashion. I had no idea how to eat it. I felt myself start to tear up as I stared at this fruit that was simultaneously so familiar and so, so foreign.
Flash forward two months. Last night Mama challenged me to peel an orange, TZ style, with a single knife stroke. When I succeeded, she grabbed my hand and she exclaimed, “You are Tanzanian.” Then we sang the Tanzanian national anthem together. Seriously.
I sat with Mama for several hours last night as she cooked dinner on the fire. She asked why I was being so quiet and I said I was sad to leave and scared to live without her. She said, “You’ll get used to it.” and continued to give me a pep talk about what a great Volunteer I’ll be and how she’s sure I’ll be ok because I am able to cook ugali. Then she teared up a little bit as she complimented me some more about how fat I've gotten. I seriously have no idea what I'm going to do without her.
Our goodbye this morning went like this: "My child! I will remember you so much! I have gotten so used to you." "Mama! I will call you and I will say, 'Help! how do you cook Ugali?" "You lie! You already know how to cook ugali! You are so ready." (We both start crying.)
Training is now over. Having passed the Swahili exam and proven myself to have enough common sense to not be a danger to US interests abroad, tomorrow I will be sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I have yet again packed up everything I own and am leaving the place that has truly begun to feel like home.
My last week at homestay was amazing. Ramadan started on Tuesday, and I decided to join my family in fasting during daylight hours. In a weird way, I think it was the most important decision I’ve made since coming here. It‘s hard to explain why exactly I decided to fast, but it was mostly an impulsive response to the sudden realization that I have a limited number of hours left to spend with my host family. The family will keep fasting for the next 30 days, but I'm waiting till I get to my site to decide if I'm going to keep it up. I think it might be a good way to help with the integration process, as my new community has a large muslim population as well. Ramadan with my host family was a lot of fun. We fasted all day and then ate a gigantic and incredibly delicious meal at 6:30. Then we hung out for a bit, cooked some more, went to bed early, and woke up at 2 or 3am to eat again.
A few days ago she explained to me the purpose of fasting during Ramadan. From the every-third-word I understood, it sounds a lot like Yom Kippur--repentance, purification, all that good stuff. Today I told her that I am fasting because people from my religion (she’s still not sure what Jews are, but she gets that I’m something other than Muslim or Christian) have a holiday that is like a one-day Ramadan, but I don’t like to celebrate it alone. I’ve been bumming a bit about the fact that I’m the only Jew in my training class--I’m not religious in the “pray to God on a regular basis” (or really ever) kind of way, but after spending nine summers at Tamarack, four years in BBYO, and countless hours in Temple Israel’s youth choir, Judaism played a role in many of my best memories. Jewish rituals have so many warm-fuzzy associations, but for me, practicing religion has never been about connecting to an external deity -- I practice Judaism as a way to connect to my community. Here in Tanzania, my community is Muslim. So ramadan it is.
I have to wrap up now... time for dinner and then my last night as a trainee--tomorrow I become a real volunteer! wooooooohoo. I'll be getting to my site sometime between the 19th and 21st... still not sure on the specifics there. I have my super safi new cell phone and would love to hear from anyone. My number is ** EDIT: cuontry code is 255, not 855!!** 255-782-496-513. You can call from skype for pretty cheap. My birthday is September 10th... Tanzanians aren't really into birthdays, most of them have to think really hard when you ask how hold they are... so you know, hint hint...
Flash forward two months. Last night Mama challenged me to peel an orange, TZ style, with a single knife stroke. When I succeeded, she grabbed my hand and she exclaimed, “You are Tanzanian.” Then we sang the Tanzanian national anthem together. Seriously.
I sat with Mama for several hours last night as she cooked dinner on the fire. She asked why I was being so quiet and I said I was sad to leave and scared to live without her. She said, “You’ll get used to it.” and continued to give me a pep talk about what a great Volunteer I’ll be and how she’s sure I’ll be ok because I am able to cook ugali. Then she teared up a little bit as she complimented me some more about how fat I've gotten. I seriously have no idea what I'm going to do without her.
Our goodbye this morning went like this: "My child! I will remember you so much! I have gotten so used to you." "Mama! I will call you and I will say, 'Help! how do you cook Ugali?" "You lie! You already know how to cook ugali! You are so ready." (We both start crying.)
Training is now over. Having passed the Swahili exam and proven myself to have enough common sense to not be a danger to US interests abroad, tomorrow I will be sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I have yet again packed up everything I own and am leaving the place that has truly begun to feel like home.
My last week at homestay was amazing. Ramadan started on Tuesday, and I decided to join my family in fasting during daylight hours. In a weird way, I think it was the most important decision I’ve made since coming here. It‘s hard to explain why exactly I decided to fast, but it was mostly an impulsive response to the sudden realization that I have a limited number of hours left to spend with my host family. The family will keep fasting for the next 30 days, but I'm waiting till I get to my site to decide if I'm going to keep it up. I think it might be a good way to help with the integration process, as my new community has a large muslim population as well. Ramadan with my host family was a lot of fun. We fasted all day and then ate a gigantic and incredibly delicious meal at 6:30. Then we hung out for a bit, cooked some more, went to bed early, and woke up at 2 or 3am to eat again.
A few days ago she explained to me the purpose of fasting during Ramadan. From the every-third-word I understood, it sounds a lot like Yom Kippur--repentance, purification, all that good stuff. Today I told her that I am fasting because people from my religion (she’s still not sure what Jews are, but she gets that I’m something other than Muslim or Christian) have a holiday that is like a one-day Ramadan, but I don’t like to celebrate it alone. I’ve been bumming a bit about the fact that I’m the only Jew in my training class--I’m not religious in the “pray to God on a regular basis” (or really ever) kind of way, but after spending nine summers at Tamarack, four years in BBYO, and countless hours in Temple Israel’s youth choir, Judaism played a role in many of my best memories. Jewish rituals have so many warm-fuzzy associations, but for me, practicing religion has never been about connecting to an external deity -- I practice Judaism as a way to connect to my community. Here in Tanzania, my community is Muslim. So ramadan it is.
I have to wrap up now... time for dinner and then my last night as a trainee--tomorrow I become a real volunteer! wooooooohoo. I'll be getting to my site sometime between the 19th and 21st... still not sure on the specifics there. I have my super safi new cell phone and would love to hear from anyone. My number is ** EDIT: cuontry code is 255, not 855!!** 255-782-496-513. You can call from skype for pretty cheap. My birthday is September 10th... Tanzanians aren't really into birthdays, most of them have to think really hard when you ask how hold they are... so you know, hint hint...
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Safi Sana! (very clean!)
So I had a whole long blog typed up, but Karibu Tanzania, it's not looking like I'm going to be able to upload it anytime soon. No worries, I'll just give the cliffnotes. Pretty much my experience so far can be summed up with a single story, which goes something like this...
I got a cell phone! Then I dropped it in the pit latrine. Then my Mama decided it was a good idea to build this ten foot long pole-with-a-bowl-attached contraption thing to literally scoop it out. Of the giant underground pool of human shit. I thought that was a brilliant idea at the time. So did the 50 or so kids from the village who all came over to laugh in my face. Word travels fast. We got the phone out. It was gross. I bought a new one anyway.
This was an important cultural lesson. I'm aware that the normal American response to dropping your 30 dollar cell phone into a giant pile of shit ten feet below the ground (not that that's a normal American thing to do, but you know what I mean) is to think, "Well, guess I'm down 30 bucks. Sucks." But for people living on less than a dollar a day, it would be insane to not go to absurd lengths like taking the roof off of the bathroom hut (don't ask, it was necessary) to extract the valuable item.
Besides exemplifying the differing perspectives we have on money, which are pretty obvious, some more subtle cultural lessons were hidden in the drama. I recently learned that there is no Swahili equivilant for the English construction "to have" as in "to possess." In Swahili, you never "have" an item, you say that you happen to "be with" the item. It doesn't get much more collectivist than that. My host family, despite being desperately poor by pretty much any standard, showers me with gifts and delicious meals on a daily basis. They also went out of their way to extract my disgusting piece of unnecessary electronic-ness from their pit latrine. And they did so while smiling and laughing with me.
I have so much more to write but I only have 4 minutes before the internet shuts off! I also want to let everyone know that I have my site information!! After training ends and I'm officially sworn in as a volunteer, I'll be "installed" on August 18th in a very remote village at the base of Mt. Hanang. I couldn't be more pleased with my placement, it is everything I could have hoped for with a cool/dry climate to boot! Send me warm socks and bring your hiking boots if you come to visit!! I'll give more information later, I'm not sure I'm allowed to post the name of the actual village on this blog but if you're interested you can email me.
I'll be posting my new address in a few weeks, but you can send things to the old one and they'll make it to me eventually. Big thanks to everyone who has sent me letters so far. They keep me going.
so much love,
Lauren
I got a cell phone! Then I dropped it in the pit latrine. Then my Mama decided it was a good idea to build this ten foot long pole-with-a-bowl-attached contraption thing to literally scoop it out. Of the giant underground pool of human shit. I thought that was a brilliant idea at the time. So did the 50 or so kids from the village who all came over to laugh in my face. Word travels fast. We got the phone out. It was gross. I bought a new one anyway.
This was an important cultural lesson. I'm aware that the normal American response to dropping your 30 dollar cell phone into a giant pile of shit ten feet below the ground (not that that's a normal American thing to do, but you know what I mean) is to think, "Well, guess I'm down 30 bucks. Sucks." But for people living on less than a dollar a day, it would be insane to not go to absurd lengths like taking the roof off of the bathroom hut (don't ask, it was necessary) to extract the valuable item.
Besides exemplifying the differing perspectives we have on money, which are pretty obvious, some more subtle cultural lessons were hidden in the drama. I recently learned that there is no Swahili equivilant for the English construction "to have" as in "to possess." In Swahili, you never "have" an item, you say that you happen to "be with" the item. It doesn't get much more collectivist than that. My host family, despite being desperately poor by pretty much any standard, showers me with gifts and delicious meals on a daily basis. They also went out of their way to extract my disgusting piece of unnecessary electronic-ness from their pit latrine. And they did so while smiling and laughing with me.
I have so much more to write but I only have 4 minutes before the internet shuts off! I also want to let everyone know that I have my site information!! After training ends and I'm officially sworn in as a volunteer, I'll be "installed" on August 18th in a very remote village at the base of Mt. Hanang. I couldn't be more pleased with my placement, it is everything I could have hoped for with a cool/dry climate to boot! Send me warm socks and bring your hiking boots if you come to visit!! I'll give more information later, I'm not sure I'm allowed to post the name of the actual village on this blog but if you're interested you can email me.
I'll be posting my new address in a few weeks, but you can send things to the old one and they'll make it to me eventually. Big thanks to everyone who has sent me letters so far. They keep me going.
so much love,
Lauren
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Pole pole ndio mwendo (Slowly slowly is the speed)
The past week and a half has felt like a year, but now that I’ve settled into a routine time has suddenly sped up. Training has been incredible so far, and I’ll be sad to see it end--though the prospect of moving to a new part of the country and settling in to what will become my home for two years is exciting as well.
It’s hard to explain all of the emotions I go through on a daily basis. There is so much I want to say but it’s hard to find the words. I think I’ll start by explaining what a normal day is like for me in my new home.
I wake up at 5am to the crowing of a rooster. I lay in bed for a while staring at my mosquito net and thinking about whatever crazy dream I just had (realistic and bizarre dreams are a side-effect of the malaria prophylaxis). At 5:45 I crawl out of bed and put on a pair of long pants, a modest tee-shirt, and a kanga (kinda like a wrap). The kanga is very important -- once I forgot to put my kanga on over my pants and my host Mama looked at me as if I’d just walked out of my room naked.
I walk down the mud road that is beginning to glow bright orange as the sun slowly rises. I wave to sleepy neighbors who collecting buckets of water from the well near our home or chasing after escaped goats. I meet up with a couple other PCTs for a morning jog. I’m quite convinced that people would pay good money for a virtual reality “African Village” exercise/video game. The point of the game would be to gather as many points as possible as you run through two or three villages and frantically try to remember how to speak Swahili while enjoying the delicious feeling of humidity filling up your gasping lungs. You get 20 points for each person you properly greet, lose 100 points if you fail to say “Shikamoo” to an elder (an important sign of respect) if a barefoot kid or neighbor decides to follow you for a while, it could go either way. You gain 30 points if you are able to sustain a 2+ minute conversation, but you lose 30 points if you can’t communicate with your new running mate.
After coming home from my morning run, I enjoy the luxury of a warm shower. And by warm shower, I mean Mama heats up water before putting it in a bucket for me to pour over my body. No joke, I love bucket baths. I don’t know why, but my steaming bucket bath is the highlight of my morning. Tanzanians are extremely cleanly people, so Mama makes me take a bucket bath at night as well. Very little can compare to a warm bucket bath under the incredible Tanzanian stars. After bathing, I grab some tea and breakfast and then head to school. It’s not unusual for a small crowd of children to follow me to school--less so now that the village is getting used to having five wazungu (white people) hanging around all the time, but for a while it was like something out of a movie. I think my fellow PCT Logan put it accurately when he said that sometimes he feels like he fell asleep watching a commercial for one of those "sponsor a child" things and woke up here.
After a long day of Swahili class, I go for a “language walk around” in which I’m supposed to converse with villagers using the Swahili words I learned that day. It usually goes something like this (note the 300 greetings, they are a crucial part of any Tanzanian conversation)
Me: Hello! How are you today?
Child: Hello! I’m fine, thanks. How is school?
Me: Good. How is home?
Child: Good. How is your Mama?
Me: Good. How is your family?
Child: Good. How are your studies?
Me: Good. I am learning, slowly. This is a tree.
Child: Yes, that is a tree. *says something I don’t understand*
Me: *awkward pause* How old are you?
Child: I am 10. *says something I don’t understand*
Me: I am 21. *pause* That is a tree. *pause* OK thank you, goodbye!
Language learning is a frustrating process, but I’m feeling more confident after this week. After getting home from school everyday, I hang out around the kitchen (which is actually a mud cave-type-thing outside our house) with Mama, who is also known as my new best friend. We chat about my day (in Swahili, no one in my family speaks English) and she quizzes me by pointing to things within eyesight and making me give her their names in Swahili. Things within eyesight include: cows, goats, chickens, fire, firewood, charcoal stove, kerosene lamp… you get the idea.
After cooking, I chill out with my host sisters and brothers for a while. We play a lot of Uno and sometimes they try to teach me songs in Swahili. Once they talked me into singing for them in English, and Mama came in and yelled at us because I’m not supposed to be speaking English. I took Mama’s willingness to yell at me as a sign that I’m integrating well into the family.
Tonight Mama was excited because I ate all of my ugali (with my hands, by the way). She said something I didn’t quite catch, but I think the gist was that she’s going to help me get nice and fat for the Tanzanian men. Love this country!
I have so much more to say but this is getting ridiculously long and I'm really running late. I'll have internet again... in another few weeks? maybe? in the meantime, see posts below and SEND ME LETTERS. I LOVE MAIL.
It’s hard to explain all of the emotions I go through on a daily basis. There is so much I want to say but it’s hard to find the words. I think I’ll start by explaining what a normal day is like for me in my new home.
I wake up at 5am to the crowing of a rooster. I lay in bed for a while staring at my mosquito net and thinking about whatever crazy dream I just had (realistic and bizarre dreams are a side-effect of the malaria prophylaxis). At 5:45 I crawl out of bed and put on a pair of long pants, a modest tee-shirt, and a kanga (kinda like a wrap). The kanga is very important -- once I forgot to put my kanga on over my pants and my host Mama looked at me as if I’d just walked out of my room naked.
I walk down the mud road that is beginning to glow bright orange as the sun slowly rises. I wave to sleepy neighbors who collecting buckets of water from the well near our home or chasing after escaped goats. I meet up with a couple other PCTs for a morning jog. I’m quite convinced that people would pay good money for a virtual reality “African Village” exercise/video game. The point of the game would be to gather as many points as possible as you run through two or three villages and frantically try to remember how to speak Swahili while enjoying the delicious feeling of humidity filling up your gasping lungs. You get 20 points for each person you properly greet, lose 100 points if you fail to say “Shikamoo” to an elder (an important sign of respect) if a barefoot kid or neighbor decides to follow you for a while, it could go either way. You gain 30 points if you are able to sustain a 2+ minute conversation, but you lose 30 points if you can’t communicate with your new running mate.
After coming home from my morning run, I enjoy the luxury of a warm shower. And by warm shower, I mean Mama heats up water before putting it in a bucket for me to pour over my body. No joke, I love bucket baths. I don’t know why, but my steaming bucket bath is the highlight of my morning. Tanzanians are extremely cleanly people, so Mama makes me take a bucket bath at night as well. Very little can compare to a warm bucket bath under the incredible Tanzanian stars. After bathing, I grab some tea and breakfast and then head to school. It’s not unusual for a small crowd of children to follow me to school--less so now that the village is getting used to having five wazungu (white people) hanging around all the time, but for a while it was like something out of a movie. I think my fellow PCT Logan put it accurately when he said that sometimes he feels like he fell asleep watching a commercial for one of those "sponsor a child" things and woke up here.
After a long day of Swahili class, I go for a “language walk around” in which I’m supposed to converse with villagers using the Swahili words I learned that day. It usually goes something like this (note the 300 greetings, they are a crucial part of any Tanzanian conversation)
Me: Hello! How are you today?
Child: Hello! I’m fine, thanks. How is school?
Me: Good. How is home?
Child: Good. How is your Mama?
Me: Good. How is your family?
Child: Good. How are your studies?
Me: Good. I am learning, slowly. This is a tree.
Child: Yes, that is a tree. *says something I don’t understand*
Me: *awkward pause* How old are you?
Child: I am 10. *says something I don’t understand*
Me: I am 21. *pause* That is a tree. *pause* OK thank you, goodbye!
Language learning is a frustrating process, but I’m feeling more confident after this week. After getting home from school everyday, I hang out around the kitchen (which is actually a mud cave-type-thing outside our house) with Mama, who is also known as my new best friend. We chat about my day (in Swahili, no one in my family speaks English) and she quizzes me by pointing to things within eyesight and making me give her their names in Swahili. Things within eyesight include: cows, goats, chickens, fire, firewood, charcoal stove, kerosene lamp… you get the idea.
After cooking, I chill out with my host sisters and brothers for a while. We play a lot of Uno and sometimes they try to teach me songs in Swahili. Once they talked me into singing for them in English, and Mama came in and yelled at us because I’m not supposed to be speaking English. I took Mama’s willingness to yell at me as a sign that I’m integrating well into the family.
Tonight Mama was excited because I ate all of my ugali (with my hands, by the way). She said something I didn’t quite catch, but I think the gist was that she’s going to help me get nice and fat for the Tanzanian men. Love this country!
I have so much more to say but this is getting ridiculously long and I'm really running late. I'll have internet again... in another few weeks? maybe? in the meantime, see posts below and SEND ME LETTERS. I LOVE MAIL.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Karibu Tanzania
For those who were concerned, rest assured that I am alive, healthy, happy, mosquito bitten but not yet sunburnt, and enjoying my first week in Tanzania. I don’t really have a lot to report just yet. I met the other trainees in Philidelphia and we had a long but mostly uneventful trip to Tanzania. The highlight of the journey came about 5 hours into the second flight when I glanced out the window and was shocked to discover that the ocean had turned tan. I hadn't expected the Sahara Desert to be so clear or so impressive from above. We landed in Kenya for a moment when it was still light out, and the landscape on the way down was incredible. Some of the others claim they saw a group of galloping giraffes (haha alliteration), but I'm not convinced they weren't a hallucination.
Since arriving, I've spent most of the time at the hostel/compound we're basically stuck at this week. My day mostly consists of: wearing long skirts even though my thighs are chafing and I keep tripping, greeting people in horrible Swahili and making them giggle hysterically, being frequently stared at and called “mzungu” (white person), and using a shower that is basically attached to my toilet. Meanwhile, I am still not entirely convinced that I am in Africa. For some reason I felt like "being" in Africa would feel somehow different than "being" feels elsewhere, but obviously it doesn't. I just feel like me, only more aware of my skin color and the importance of nonverbal communication.
On Wednesday we will be moving in to our homestay families, and I expect a cold bucket bath of reality will follow. I’ll be living in a village outside of Muheza with four other trainees, a host Mama (mother) and a host Baba (father) and most likely a few host siblings. Hopefully they’ll find some use for the 10 inflatable beach balls I impulsively packed.
Kiswahili lesson of the day:
Karibu Tanzania: Welcome to Tanzania! Also used to mean "get used to it." As in, "Ouuuch there's a rock in my rice....oh well, Karibu Tanzania!"
Since arriving, I've spent most of the time at the hostel/compound we're basically stuck at this week. My day mostly consists of: wearing long skirts even though my thighs are chafing and I keep tripping, greeting people in horrible Swahili and making them giggle hysterically, being frequently stared at and called “mzungu” (white person), and using a shower that is basically attached to my toilet. Meanwhile, I am still not entirely convinced that I am in Africa. For some reason I felt like "being" in Africa would feel somehow different than "being" feels elsewhere, but obviously it doesn't. I just feel like me, only more aware of my skin color and the importance of nonverbal communication.
On Wednesday we will be moving in to our homestay families, and I expect a cold bucket bath of reality will follow. I’ll be living in a village outside of Muheza with four other trainees, a host Mama (mother) and a host Baba (father) and most likely a few host siblings. Hopefully they’ll find some use for the 10 inflatable beach balls I impulsively packed.
Kiswahili lesson of the day:
Karibu Tanzania: Welcome to Tanzania! Also used to mean "get used to it." As in, "Ouuuch there's a rock in my rice....oh well, Karibu Tanzania!"
Monday, June 14, 2010
Time to go.
Leg one of my journey, the flight to staging in Philly, begins in about three hours. In about 24 hours, I'll be waking up to get my vaccines (yummm shots), then hop on a bus to New York, then a plane to Zurich, then Nairobi, then finally finally Dar Es Salaam. Of course I can't sleep. I keep arranging and re-arranging my stuff, suddenly deciding that it's incredibly important that I bring my Spanish poetry books. Then I decide that's a stupid idea when I should obviously be focusing on Swahili for the next two years. Then I decide I'll try to sleep... only to get up a minute later to freak out about whether I'm cheating somehow by bringing my ipod. That's really not "living at the level of the community." Ahhhhhhh no time for second thoughts. I've already been over this a million times, and I really do think that having an ipod will make me happier, and thus a more productive volunteer. Crisis resolved. Then I stare at my luggage and think about rearranging it again. But there's only so much you can do with one big duffle, one small backpack, and one guitar that I don't yet know how to play.
I think I had my first "Peace Corps Moment" tonight, staring at all the crap I'm leaving at home. I don't even remember buying most of this stuff, but for each item I possess, there was a moment in which I or whoever bought that item for me believed it was necessary or at least enjoyable enough to be worth whatever it cost. How could that possibly have been true when I am leaving the vast majority of my possessions behind?
Stripped of the essentials, my room feels foreign. Packed bags are anxiously waiting for me downstairs. What I am currently staring at is a room full of stuff but lacking anything necessary. Then back to those bags I'm bringing, all the thoughts that go along with realizing what I consider to be necessary. A netbook? An ipod? I probably won't even have electricity, but I know I will be so much happier for the opportunity to use these items when I can. Should that thought make me as sad as it does?
I am freaking out on every possible level. I think I have invented new levels of freaking out to freak out on. It's kind of impressive.
OK, apparently this blog is going to be a bit more emotional than my others have been. Get excited and/or have your barf bags at the ready...
- Lauren
PS: "Volunteers" was an excellent send-off movie. Thank you, Uncle Jimmy!
I think I had my first "Peace Corps Moment" tonight, staring at all the crap I'm leaving at home. I don't even remember buying most of this stuff, but for each item I possess, there was a moment in which I or whoever bought that item for me believed it was necessary or at least enjoyable enough to be worth whatever it cost. How could that possibly have been true when I am leaving the vast majority of my possessions behind?
Stripped of the essentials, my room feels foreign. Packed bags are anxiously waiting for me downstairs. What I am currently staring at is a room full of stuff but lacking anything necessary. Then back to those bags I'm bringing, all the thoughts that go along with realizing what I consider to be necessary. A netbook? An ipod? I probably won't even have electricity, but I know I will be so much happier for the opportunity to use these items when I can. Should that thought make me as sad as it does?
I am freaking out on every possible level. I think I have invented new levels of freaking out to freak out on. It's kind of impressive.
OK, apparently this blog is going to be a bit more emotional than my others have been. Get excited and/or have your barf bags at the ready...
- Lauren
PS: "Volunteers" was an excellent send-off movie. Thank you, Uncle Jimmy!
Friday, June 11, 2010
From Detroit to Tanzania
So it turns out preparing to move to Tanzania for two years is stressful. 500 cool points to my mom for being her awesome self and dealing with me.
Anyway. Here is a head's up about where I'll be and when...
(Mon) June 14th - Fly out of Detroit at 7am, arrive in Philadelphia, schlep ass to hotel, do Peace Corps Staging all day. This will probably consist of meeting the other volunteers and lots of paperwork... and if all goes well, some camp-style ice breakers. I am pumped.
(Tues) June 15th - Leave hotel early in the morning, get a bunch of shots, ride a bus to JFK Airport in NYC, flight leaves in the evening.
(Wed) June 16th - Layover in Zurich, Switzerland, but mostly just flying all day. Arrive in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in the evening. Counting the bus ride, that is about 33 hours of travel. Yum.
Next 8 days will be spent in Dar es Salaam doing...something.
After our time in Dar es Salaam, we'll travel up to a town in north-east Tanzania, where we'll be living and learning until Swearing In day, in mid-August. We'll be split up into groups of 5 (out of our group of 45ish) and put into villages which as far as I can tell are basically simulation Peace Corps sites. The people are real people, not simulation people, in case that wasn't clear. The simulation part is that we're in a group of 5 and not all by our lonesomes, like we will be after swearing in. And also that we have Peace Corps staff helping us. Our training includes 5 categories: Technical (so for me, Agriculture and Environmental stuff), Language (Swahili), Safety and Security, Cross Cultural, and Health.
Anyway. Here is a head's up about where I'll be and when...
(Mon) June 14th - Fly out of Detroit at 7am, arrive in Philadelphia, schlep ass to hotel, do Peace Corps Staging all day. This will probably consist of meeting the other volunteers and lots of paperwork... and if all goes well, some camp-style ice breakers. I am pumped.
(Tues) June 15th - Leave hotel early in the morning, get a bunch of shots, ride a bus to JFK Airport in NYC, flight leaves in the evening.
(Wed) June 16th - Layover in Zurich, Switzerland, but mostly just flying all day. Arrive in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in the evening. Counting the bus ride, that is about 33 hours of travel. Yum.
Next 8 days will be spent in Dar es Salaam doing...something.
After our time in Dar es Salaam, we'll travel up to a town in north-east Tanzania, where we'll be living and learning until Swearing In day, in mid-August. We'll be split up into groups of 5 (out of our group of 45ish) and put into villages which as far as I can tell are basically simulation Peace Corps sites. The people are real people, not simulation people, in case that wasn't clear. The simulation part is that we're in a group of 5 and not all by our lonesomes, like we will be after swearing in. And also that we have Peace Corps staff helping us. Our training includes 5 categories: Technical (so for me, Agriculture and Environmental stuff), Language (Swahili), Safety and Security, Cross Cultural, and Health.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Send me letters today!
Hello friends,
I'll be arriving in Tanzania in two weeks. I am so excited, so nervous, and so not packed. Packing is overrated; I have been preparing in other ways. I've been reading up on Tanzanian history and politics. It's really fascinating. I am a huge dork. I also have a guitar lesson tonight! I've decided to bring the old guitar my brother never learned how to play to give myself something to do. If I'm ever going to figure out how to play that thing, I think two years without electricity is my only hope.
If you write a letter today, it might beat me there. But it might not. So get on it. I have seen other volunteers from my crew pleading for letters already and I have decided it is a competition and I must win. Letters are better than email because they are portable and I can read over them in my electricity-less hut on steaming afternoons when I'm sweating my toes off and missing the beautiful Michigan winters, which I will have obviously romanticized by this point. Bonus points if you include a picture or a note from someone under age 4. Extra bonus points if that person is named Noa.
My address until August (I'll let you know when it changes):
Lauren Fink, PCT
U.S. Peace Corps
PO Box 9123
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
**AIR MAIL**
Tips for sending mail: (stolen from another volunteer, whatup Sativa??)
-Go over the writing in red ink to make it look more official and important
-Indicate that it contains educational materials
-Never disclose a value over $10 for the items being sent
-Draw religious pictures on (Jesus, crosses, Virgin de Guadeloupe... etc). Apparently the search people aren't too keen on messing with religious crap.
For those who wish to send me presents, here are some ideas:
- Guitar tabs (bonus points for Simon and Garfunkel, extra bonus points for labor organizing tunes)
- Cliff Bars! I am addicted and they are indestructible.
- Powdered drink mixes (crystal light, etc.) - not cherry flavored if you can avoid it
- Recorded cassette tapes (remember the early 90s??). Bonus points for mixed tapes.
- Photos of all the fun I'm missing
- Love letters
- Books (I'll read pretty much anything)
- Seeds (things that will grow anywhere)
- Coloring books, markers, and craft supplies
I also want your addresses!! If you want a letter, please reply to this post or send me an email with your mailing address.
Who's excited?? I AM!!
I'll be arriving in Tanzania in two weeks. I am so excited, so nervous, and so not packed. Packing is overrated; I have been preparing in other ways. I've been reading up on Tanzanian history and politics. It's really fascinating. I am a huge dork. I also have a guitar lesson tonight! I've decided to bring the old guitar my brother never learned how to play to give myself something to do. If I'm ever going to figure out how to play that thing, I think two years without electricity is my only hope.
If you write a letter today, it might beat me there. But it might not. So get on it. I have seen other volunteers from my crew pleading for letters already and I have decided it is a competition and I must win. Letters are better than email because they are portable and I can read over them in my electricity-less hut on steaming afternoons when I'm sweating my toes off and missing the beautiful Michigan winters, which I will have obviously romanticized by this point. Bonus points if you include a picture or a note from someone under age 4. Extra bonus points if that person is named Noa.
My address until August (I'll let you know when it changes):
Lauren Fink, PCT
U.S. Peace Corps
PO Box 9123
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
**AIR MAIL**
Tips for sending mail: (stolen from another volunteer, whatup Sativa??)
-Go over the writing in red ink to make it look more official and important
-Indicate that it contains educational materials
-Never disclose a value over $10 for the items being sent
-Draw religious pictures on (Jesus, crosses, Virgin de Guadeloupe... etc). Apparently the search people aren't too keen on messing with religious crap.
For those who wish to send me presents, here are some ideas:
- Guitar tabs (bonus points for Simon and Garfunkel, extra bonus points for labor organizing tunes)
- Cliff Bars! I am addicted and they are indestructible.
- Powdered drink mixes (crystal light, etc.) - not cherry flavored if you can avoid it
- Recorded cassette tapes (remember the early 90s??). Bonus points for mixed tapes.
- Photos of all the fun I'm missing
- Love letters
- Books (I'll read pretty much anything)
- Seeds (things that will grow anywhere)
- Coloring books, markers, and craft supplies
I also want your addresses!! If you want a letter, please reply to this post or send me an email with your mailing address.
Who's excited?? I AM!!
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